Serag Heiba Wants You to Know About Climate Inequity

Morningsider Serag Heiba recently penned an investigative piece titled ‘Barred from the Climate Conversation’, featured in the Green European Journal (GEJ) on September 6. He has participated in numerous youth conferences on addressing climate change, and served as Egypt’s delegate to the UNFCCC Youth4Climate (Y4C) meeting in Milan last year.

From friends and acquaintances made at such assemblies, he heard complaints of young activists barred from climate events by expensive, onerous, and discriminatory visa procedures. Deciding to shine light on this problem, Serag contacted activists through climate activist mailing groups (of the UNFCCC and its youth constituency YOUNGO) to hear about their experiences. He received dozens of corroborating accounts in response. Young activists shared their own struggles as well as their databases demonstrating the ubiquity of visa issues, predominantly for applicants from developing nations. A member of the GEJ team took note of Serag’s outreach and invited him to publish the piece in their journal.

Serag has more pieces that are soon to be published, for the Hong Kong based African Spear Magazine. In his writing, he shares personal stories of experiencing Eid al-Adha in Egypt as a vegetarian, and of living in a Californian student co-op that emulated the activist legacy of Bantu Stephen Biko. He advises fellow student writers to keep writing and sending out pieces for publishing. Even normal-seeming stories from his life have been received enthusiastically by publishers of different backgrounds, perhaps owing to his eloquence and honest introspection.